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Yeah, the combat system in AoC is very, very good. The graphics and combat animations of AoC are top notch. I also think that their high end instances are also extremely good. The problem is Funcom thou. Funcom seems to go off on wild tangets on their priorities. Adding things no one asked for (ala invisible walls) while not fixing game breaking bugs (mini game bug). I still to this day do not understand Funcom's decision making process. The game is pretty buggy now (American servers).

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I also really enjoy AoC's combat animations etc.

Champions Online also has a great combat system. It also has a blocking mechanic, though quite different. It has attacks that change depending on how long you hold them down - "Charge" attacks. Some that have different effects depending on whether you go beyond 50% charge for example. Some of these in practice become like having two different powers.

For example on my force field character, I can spam one attack with taps for a lot of DPS on a single target, but it is also useful for knocking back a whole pile of foes if I hold it down (which is hard to do since it uses so much power, you have to have an energy form up)

City of Heroes also should be mentioned. Though that is a different story, the combat, the using abilities part is more or less typical for an MMO. The thing that is CoH really tops most other MMOs in is, the complexity and variety of builds.

If you can imagine a fantasy or sci-fi, or super hero character you can approximate it in CoH. That is somewhat true of CO too if you have a paid account, since it is classless, but I think CO has more abilities and the invention origin enhancements make it a little more various imho.

"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga

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Every time I play another MMO I always compare it to AoC and AoC wasn't even my first MMO. It was such a huge leap forward from what was being put out at the time and still today!

There are so many things that Funcom did right with this game that I have yet to ever find in another MMO since. The ambience is just amazing. When I'm in Cimmeria it can be 90 degrees in my room, but I feel like I should be cold and wearing a heavy coat. The combat is visceral, gory and takes skill rather than just TAB+1+2+3 like most other MMO's on the market. The music is amazing, the character customization is really good and now that there is a social clothing tab, everyone can look exactly how they want to look so every person of the same class isn't a clone anymore.

Unfortunately they really screwed up bad in two areas that really count: end game progression (The Korean/asian style super grind) and PVP. PVP should never have been gear based, there never should have been separate gear for PVP, and AoC showed us just how terrible of an idea FFA PVP really is. Faction based PVP with real world objectives to fight over should have always been the model.

As much as I want to only play AoC for the rest of my MMO playing days, they screwed the pooch on everything past leveling to max... but boy did I have a wonderful time getting to 80 on all of my characters.

Enjoyable (mostly, I hate the multi-key system) combat, but gear has no hint of relevance in any aspect, leaving you "grinding" out meaningless trite quests for nothing. (I'm not going to rant about how they handle "elite" and "special" world mobs or level scaling.) I never even tried to PVP, but I've yet to hear anything good about it.

Instead of for example, Vanguard - which the only thing that game has ever had going for it is that it's soon dead, and has a giant-ass world. Or Warhammer, with the early days RVR being it's only worthwhile point.

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OP.. Your post hits the spot. Perfectly.

AoC is so fare ahead of even todays games getting launched when it get to tech. There is no way you will find the same number of bones in any character of any other MMO. Also there is no way you will find such an perfect implementation of motion capture animations. There is no way you will find such a crisp wellmade combat system... I really love it and have stayed with the game for ever.

However, the price FunCom had to pay for launching a game with such high ambitions was poorer stability, more complaints and just more complexity in general. However, for those people having the right hardware, haveing a good internet access with a service provider that does not have fcked up and unstable network hubs in their service you can have imense fun. I am one of those lucky guys and I'll stay with AoC for many more years for that reason..

Note: AoC could still be a rising star just for the reason that tech out there in the world and hardware home in the playroom continually gets better. Eventually everyone will be able to play this game without a glitch in it's full splendour. The way I see it, AoC seem to get more users lately.. But that might also just be because SWTOR is tanking.

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AOC was my favorite MMO of all time. I loved everything about it until the Asian XPAC which it turned into a big grind and quit shortly after. To me it still has the best dungeons i have ever played. They actually felt like dungeons instead of this crap in WOW and SWTOR. Combat system is the best ever i think. Graphics are the best ever which to me is extremely important in immersion. I cant be drawn into a game if it looks horrible. Soundtrack was incredible, it helped immersion a ton too. YoI played it for about 2 years straight and cant find anything to replace it.

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Gamed AoC for a while in the beginning and got bored of the game but I truly did love the combat system, not so much about ten tons of abilities but more about movement and constant action. Loved it and would have loved to see it more games. Have no clue how easy it would be to implement in games but the "select target and autofight, chosing different abilities on autopilot" way of combat is boring.

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Both Bioware and FunCom uses a motionsuit for animations so it is kinda odd that you think one is great and the other sucks. It do matters who wears the suit but still...

I'm not sure either. While SWTORs animations aren't bad, some of them are quite good, they just don't seem to be nearly as well implemented as in AoC, especially the combat.

I keep coming back to play AoC because of the combat (and the great visuals). I agree that Khitai kind of killed a lot of my enthusiasm for the game due to the grind, which was pity because the areas were great and there were a lot of challenging fights. The dungeons were superbly done (if you could find a group for them). But the faction grind was the worst.

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Both Bioware and FunCom uses a motionsuit for animations so it is kinda odd that you think one is great and the other sucks. It do matters who wears the suit but still...

I'm not sure either. While SWTORs animations aren't bad, some of them are quite good, they just don't seem to be nearly as well implemented as in AoC, especially the combat.

I keep coming back to play AoC because of the combat (and the great visuals). I agree that Khitai kind of killed a lot of my enthusiasm for the game due to the grind, which was pity because the areas were great and there were a lot of challenging fights. The dungeons were superbly done (if you could find a group for them). But the faction grind was the worst.

Yep the faction grind is why i pretty much why i quit. Also i was a tank and felt like i needed to grind 2 sets of armor, protection and regular. Which made it a horrible grind. Before Khitai, i could log in and hop in raids and nobody what guild was running it, i knew people in the raid to cut the shit with. So i never felt like i had to play to keep up but i would just log in do some dungeons and raids, play an alt and if a raid popped, i would just jump in it. I miss that.

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Both Bioware and FunCom uses a motionsuit for animations so it is kinda odd that you think one is great and the other sucks. It do matters who wears the suit but still...

I'm not sure either. While SWTORs animations aren't bad, some of them are quite good, they just don't seem to be nearly as well implemented as in AoC, especially the combat.

I keep coming back to play AoC because of the combat (and the great visuals). I agree that Khitai kind of killed a lot of my enthusiasm for the game due to the grind, which was pity because the areas were great and there were a lot of challenging fights. The dungeons were superbly done (if you could find a group for them). But the faction grind was the worst.

Yep the faction grind is why i pretty much why i quit. Also i was a tank and felt like i needed to grind 2 sets of armor, protection and regular. Which made it a horrible grind. Before Khitai, i could log in and hop in raids and nobody what guild was running it, i knew people in the raid to cut the shit with. So i never felt like i had to play to keep up but i would just log in do some dungeons and raids, play an alt and if a raid popped, i would just jump in it. I miss that. In other MMOs with the dailys, i feel like if i dont log in that day i get behind, i never felt like that in AOC before Khitai. I hate daily dungeon and quests crap.

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Both Bioware and FunCom uses a motionsuit for animations so it is kinda odd that you think one is great and the other sucks. It do matters who wears the suit but still...

I do have to admit that I love AoCs use of collision detection instead of targetting in melee. It is excellent and something I wish all other fantasy MMOs should take after.

I had fun a while in AoC but the game is just too small to be really great and the qeusts are somewhat uneven, some of them are really great others rather bad.

tsk tsk.. Loke.

That is too simple of an comment. The number of bones in your character model also play a huge role in how well the animations play out. There is no MMO with more bones in your character than the AoC models. SWTOR today is down at about 70 bones while AoC have a whooping 140... Noone are close even to AoC ( TSW have about 80 bones... but it shows that it is not as ambitious as AoC).

Other things that also is of importance is the timing and implementation of the motion captured data. Even if BioWare dared to go with same number of bones as the FunCom AoC, the animations still could feel wrong. So I think my comment still holds water. AoC animations are unmatched in the entire gameindustry.